This is a nationalist doctrine which was not born out of Judaism
but out of the European nationalism of the 19th century. Herzl, the
founder of political Zionism, did not claim to belong to a religion:
"I do not obey a religious impulse."

He was not interested in the "Holy Land" in particular: for his
nationalist objectives, he would have equally accepted Uganda or
Tripoli, Cyprus or Argentina, Mozambique or the Congo.

SOURCE: Herzl, Diaries
(passim).

But in the face of the opposition of his Jewish friends, he realized
the importance of the "Mighty Legend" (June 9, 1895), Diaries I, p.
56) as "a rallying cry of irresistible power."

SOURCE: Herzl, p. 45.

This is a mobilizing slogan that this eminently realistic politician
could not ignore. Transposing this "mighty Legend" of the "Return"
into historical reality, he declared: "Palestine is our unforgettable
historical homeland ... The name alone will be a powerful rallying
cry for our people."

SOURCE: "L´État Juif," p.
209.

"The Jewish Question is for me neither a social question nor a
religious question ... it is a national question."

This is a colonial doctrine. Here too, the lucid Theodore Herzl does
not hide his objectives. The first step is to set up a "Charter
Company" under the protection of England, or any other power, as a
stepping stone toward the formation of "the Jewish State." That is
why he called on the master of this type of operation, the colonial
trafficker, Cecil Rhodes, who used his Charter Company to carve out
of South Africa a subsidiary bearing his name: Rhodesia.

Theodore Herzl wrote him on January 11, 1902:

"Please send me a letter stating that you have examined
my program and that you approve it. You may be wondering why I am
calling on you, Mr. Rhodes. It is because my program is a
political program."

SOURCE: Herzl, "Tagebuch," Vol. III,
p. 105.

The Zionist doctrine adopted at the August 1897 Basle Congress had
three dimensions: political, nationalist, colonial. Due to his
Machiavellian genius, Theodore Herzl could justifiably say:

"I founded the Jewish State."

SOURCE: "Diaries," p. 224.

Half a century later, his disciples applied exactly the same
policies, used the same methods and followed the same political line
to create the State of Israel (after W.W. II).

But this political, nationalist, colonialist enterprise was never a
fulfilment of Jewish faith and spirituality. At the same time as the
Congress of Basle, which could not be held in Munich (as predicted by
Herzl) because of opposition from the German Jewish community,
another conference was held in Montreal (1892), where Rabbi Isaac
Meyer Wise, the most representative Jewish personality in America,
initiated a motion against the political and tribal Zionist
interpretation of the Bible and for a spiritual and universalist
interpretation of the Prophets.

"We totally disapprove of the initiative aiming at the
creation of a Jewish State. Attempts of this type highlight an
erroneous conception of the mission of Israel ... that the Jewish
Prophets were the first to proclaim ... It aims at a Messianic
time when men recognize belonging to one great community for the
establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth."

This opposition to political Zionism, inspired by the attachment to
the spirituality of the Jewish faith, did not cease from expressing
itself. Following W.W.II, using the U.N. and at the same time taking
advantage of rivalries among nations and, especially, of the
unconditional support of the United States, Israeli Zionism managed
to impose itself as a dominant force. Thanks to its lobby, it
succeeded in reversing an admirable prophetic tradition. But it did
not manage to stifle the criticism of great spiritual men.

Martin Buber, one of the great Jewish voices of this century, during
his entire lifetime and until his death in Israel, did not stop
denouncing the degeneracy and even the inversion of religious Zionism
into political Zionism.

Martin Buber declared in New York:

"The feeling I had 60 years ago when I entered the
Zionist movement is essentially the same feeling I have today ...
I hoped that this nationalism would not follow the path of others
a beginning with a great hope and degenerating later to become a
sacred
egoism, daring, even like Mussolini, to proclaim itself
sacroegoismo, as though collective egoism could be more sacred
than individual egoism. When we returned to Palestine, the
decisive question was: Do you want to come here as a friend, a
brother, a member of the community of people of the Middle East or
as the representatives of colonialism and of imperialism?

"The contradiction between the end and the means to reach it
divided the Zionists: some wanted to receive political privileges
from the
Great Powers, others, especially the youth, wanted to be allowed
to work in
Palestine with their neighbors, on behalf of their life together,
and for
the future.

"All was not always perfect in our relations with the Arabs, but
there was, in general, good neighborliness between Jewish
villagers and Arab villagers.

"This organic phase of establishment in Palestine lasted until the
time of Hitler.

"It was Hitler who pushed the masses of Jews to come to Palestine,
and not an elite who came to carry on their lives and prepare for
the future. Thus, a selective organic development was replaced by
a mass immigration requiring a political force for its security
... The majority of Jews preferred to learn from Hitler rather
than from us ... Hitler showed that history does not follow the
path of the mind, but that of power, and that when a people is
quite strong, it can kill with impunity ... This is the situation
that we had to combat ... To "Ihud" we proposed ... that Jews and
Arabs not only coexist but cooperate ... This would make possible
an economic development of the Middle East, thanks to which the
Middle East could bring a great essential contribution to the
future of humanity."

"We speak of the mind of Israel and we believe that we
are not like other nations ... But the mind of Israel is nothing
more than the synthesis of our national identity, nothing more
than a justification of our collective egoism ... transformed into
an idol. We have refused to accept any prince other than the Lord
of the Universe. While we are like all other nations and we drink
with them from the same cup that intoxicates them. The nation is
not the supreme value ... Jews are more than a nation: they are
the members of a community of faith.

"Jewish religion was uprooted, and this is the essence of the
disease whose symptom was the birth of Jewish nationalism around
the middle of the 19th century. This new form of desire for land
is the cornerstone of what modern Jewish nationalism has borrowed
from modern nationalism of the West.

"What does the idea of 'chosen' have to do with all that? Being
'chosen' does not indicate a feeling of superiority, but a sense
of destiny. This feeling does not originate from a comparison with
others, but from a vocation and responsibility to accomplish the
task of which the prophets keep reminding us: if you brag about
being chosen, instead of living in obedience to God, you commit a
felony."

Evoking this "nationalist crisis" of political Zionism, which is a
perversion of the spirituality of Judaism, he concludes:

"We hoped to save Jewish nationalism from the mistake of
making an idol out of people. We have failed."

In his opening address in 1946 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
where he had been president for 20 years, he said:

"The new Jewish voice speaks with the voice of guns ...
This is the new Torah of the land of Israel. The world has been
shackled by the madness of physical force. May Heaven guard us
from shackling Judaism and the people of Israel to this madness.
It is pagan Judaism that has conquered a great part of the
powerful diaspora. During the time of romantic Zionism, we thought
that Zion must be redeemed with honesty. All the Jews of America
bear the responsibility of this mistake, this mutation ... even
those who are not in agreement with the actions of the pagan
leadership but stand idly by. The anesthesia of the moral sense
leads to its atrophy."

SOURCE: Ibid, p. 131.

In fact, since the Biltmore Declaration, the Zionist leaders had the
most powerful protector: the United States. The World Zionist
Organization had swept aside the opposition of those Jews faithful to
the spiritual traditions of the prophets of Israel, and demanded the
creation, not anymore of a "national Jewish home in Palestine,"
according to the terms (if not the spirit) of the Balfour Declaration
of the preceding war (W.W. I), but the creation of a Jewish State in
Palestine.

Already in 1938, Albert Einstein condemned this Declaration:

"In my opinion, it would be more reasonable to reach an
agreement with the Arabs based on sharing life peacefully
together, rather than to create a Jewish State with borders, an
army and a project of temporal power, no matter how modest it is.
I fear the internal damage that Judaism will sustain due to the
development, in our ranks, of a narrow nationalism. We are not
anymore the Jews of the Maccabees period. To become again a nation
in the political sense of the world will be equivalent to turning
away from the spiritualization of our community that we owe to the
generosity of our prophets."

The reminders did not miss, following every Israeli violation of
international law.

To mention only two examples of what was said loudly, expressing what
many Jews think privately but, under the intellectual inquisition of
the Israeli-Zionist lobby, do not have the power to express publicly:
In 1960, during the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, the "American
Council for Judaism" declared:

"The American Council for Judaism addressed a letter
yesterday, Monday, to Mr. Christian Herter, denying the government
of Israel the right to speak in the name of all Jews. The Council
declares that Judaism is a matter of religion, not nationality."

SOURCE: "Le Monde," June 21,
1960.

During the bloody invasion of Lebanon by the Israelis, Professor
Benjamin Cohen of Tel-Aviv University wrote to P. Vidal-Naquet on
June 8, 1982:

"I am writing to you while listening to a transistor that
has just announced that 'we' are in the process of 'realizing our
objectives' in Lebanon: to insure 'peace' for the residents of
Galilee. These lies worthy of Goebbels make me mad. It is clear
that this savage war, more barbaric than any of those preceding
it, has nothing to do with the attempt in London or the security
of Galilee ... Jews, sons of Abraham ... Jews, victims themselves
of so much cruelty, how can they become so cruel? ... The greatest
success of Zionism is the 'dejudaisation' of the Jews.

"Dear friends, do whatever is in your power to prevent Begin and
Sharon from reaching their twin objectives: the final liquidation
(a fashionable expression here these days) of the Palestinians as
a people, and the Israelis as human beings."

SOURCE: Letter, published in "Le Monde,"
June 19, 1982, p. 9.

"Professor Leibowitz calls Israeli politics in Lebanon
Judeo-Nazi."

SOURCE: "Yediot Aharonoth," July 2, 1982, p.
6.

This is what is at stake in the struggle between the Jewish prophetic
faith and nationalist Zionism, based, like any other nationalism, on
the refusal to recognize the other, and on making oneself sacred.

Any nationalism has the need to hallow its pretensions. Following the
fractionization of Christianity, each of the nation-states claimed
that it had received the sacred heritage and the investiture of
God.

France is the "eldest daughter of the Church" through which it
carries on the work of God (Gesta Dei per Francos). Germany is "above
all" because God is with her (Got mit uns). Eva Person declared that
"the mission of Argentina is to bring God to the world," and in 1972,
the prime minister of South Africa, Vorster, celebrated the savage
racism of "Apartheid" saying, "Let us not forget that we are the
people of God, invested with a mission." ... Zionist nationalism
shares in this exhilaration of all nationalisms. Even the most lucid
let themselves be tempted by this exhilaration.

Even a man like Professor André Neher succumbs to this
temptation. In his beautiful book, "L'essence du
prophétisme" (Ed. Calmann-Lévy, 1972, p. 311),
after recalling so well the universal meaning of the alliance of God
and man, he ends up writing that Israel is "the sign, par
excellance,
of divine history in the world. Israel is the axis of the world, it
is its nerve, its center, its heart."

This comment recalls the unfortunate "Aryan Myth" whose ideology was
the foundation of panGermanism and Hitlerism. This path is the
opposite of the teaching of the Prophets and the admirable "I and
Thou" of Martin Buber.

Exclusiveness bans dialogue: one cannot "dialogue" with Hitler or
Begin, because their racial superiority or their exclusive alliance
with the Divine leaves them nothing to expect from the other.

We are aware that in our time, the only alternative to dialogue is
war, and, as we keep repeating, dialogue requires that from the
start, everyone is aware of what is lacking in his faith and that he
needs the other to fill this void. This is the condition of any
desire for fullness (which is the spirit of any living faith).

Our anthology of Zionist crimes is part of a body of efforts made by
those Jews who have tried to defend a prophetic Judaism against a
tribal Zionism. What nourishes antisemitism is not the criticism of
the policy of aggression, deception and blood of Israeli-Zionism. It
is the unconditional support of its policy, which by literal
interpretation of the great traditions of Judaism, selects only
whatever justifies this policy, elevates it above international law
by making sacred the myths of yesterday and today.